Slumdog Millionaire Takes Home 8 Oscars 317
Ben Burtt was robbed of his overly deserved Oscars for the sound on Wall-E, and Heath Ledger's Joker unsurprisingly got a posthumous statue, but the big winner for the night was Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire with Picture, Director, Song, and five others. Go ahead movie nerds: talk amongst yourself.
Where were these noms? (Score:3, Interesting)
Definitely, Maybe
Ghost Town
Documentaries:
Flow
National Geographic's In The Womb series
Drama:
Red
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Where were these noms?
They forgot to send hookers and blow to the Oscar committee. The parties responsible have been sacked.
What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more than the AVN awards?
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Are you seriously implying that the Nobel Prize has any meaning whatsoever? Seriously?
Do you really believe that the Nobel Prize is anything but a circle-jerk, just like the Oscars?
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Nobel Prize awards would mean more if they were not given out until there was someone of worth to award it to. Instead they are given out regularly, as if the world continuously produces people worthy of the awards. The more often they give them out, the more it is like being one of the 40 million high school queens at the prom each year. Now, if there were only one prom Queen for all the high schools in the USA each year... now that would be special.
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I quite agree with you.
I actually lost any respect for the Nobel Prize a long time ago, shortly after first learning about them and being mighty impressed,
I went through the list of the laureates.
To my surprise, I did not find Gandhi.
Instead I found that he was nominated five times, but was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now I can accept the last omission, as that was within the rules of only living people being eligible and he was assassinated after being nominated for the fifth time, but I could never accept the other four times.
There have been many other problems with the awards and omissions of them, but I still feel that this was the worst blunder of them all.
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Nobel Prize has been inflated in the minds of some (with help from the media, no doubt) to be far more than it is. It is not designed to be awarded to people who just make mind-blowing life-changing discoveries. Nobel's will specifically stated that it be awarded annually:
The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind
It then goes on to stipulate what categories each award is for.
So, the Nobel Prize was originally intended to simply be sort of a "man of the year" competition in various fields, and was supposed to pertain to work that was done during the preceding year. In that spirit, Gore's prize was proper, since he was being awarded for stuff he had done during the previous year, while those prizes given to scientists for discoveries made years or decades earlier were technically in violation of Nobel's original intent, since it was supposed to reward only work done during the preceding year.
If the Nobel Prize was awarded as a "Man of the Year in x field" rather than "person who made earth-shattering discoveries in x field", you wouldn't have near the controversy it always seems to generate.
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Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Celebrities live in a different world. It's kinda like a snow globe filled with lithium and cocaine. In their world it is the most prestigious award.
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Now I found Barbra Walters and the Red Carpet bit pretty irritating, but at least they stopped cutting people off (for the first 2 hours I voluntarily watched).
I personally am emb
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I truly believe some of the work they do is incredible and no one else in the world can come close to the product they create
Directors, special affects artists, and maybe writers, yes. But good acting isn't hard to come by. Acting is pretty easy, and there are lots of great actors who are never given the opportunity to work with the best directors, producers, or writers.
As for the Oscars, I think the opening act was insulting. A room full of millionaires gave a standing ovation to a musical bit making fun of the economic hardships we're facing. Talk about living in a bubble...
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Acting is pretty easy
I dunno about that... I've got some 'actor friends,' I've seen a lot of plays and movies and TV shows and I don't know / haven't seen too many people who could have rivalled Sean Penn's performance in "Milk" or Winslet's in "The Reader..." and on it goes. Utterly brilliant.
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Oscars are a bunch of MAFIAA types stroking themselves, and assuming (with the complicity of the media) that the entire fucking world cares about it.
When we give/get awards, it's in the family.
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Oscars have nothing to do with the MPAA or RIAA. The Oscars are the entertainers themselves nominating and awarding themselves. The votes are from current members of the actors and director's guilds (unions) and other members of the entertainment industry. They have nothing to do with the AA's other than the fact that the actor's and director's don't get paid when you pirate.
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The women in my house have a tradition for Oscars (and award shows in general) They like to open a bottle of wine (each) and sit back and giggle at the movie industry players. That alone is enough to put me off watching any of it. I didn't watch so finding out that Ledger won, and slumdog won... well I figure that I missed out on nothing. period.
When there are items in such award shows that actually have something to do with 'news for nerds' then I'll watch. Since there was no news for nerds in the awards s
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Funny)
"It's the day where the west coast pretends what they do actually matters."
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WHY SO SERIOUS??? (Score:2)
I mean really the guy died for the role so the 20 seconds to post that yes he did get his statue and that whatever movie got the rest of them is fine.
Re:What the FUCK is this doing on Slashdot?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
And I don't see why people are bitching about a thread about the Oscars. Plenty of nerds enjoy movies. If you do not like movies, you could simply NOT CLICK ON THE FUCKING ARTICLE. That's what I do when I come across an article that doesn't interest me, I don't read it (and therefore don't create a whiney post complaining about it either).
Whup der FOOK am dis bein on TiltedLineDot (Score:2)
Why do you know when Brittany's tour kicks off? Hell, I didn't know she was out of the loony bin yet.
What's a Brittany? Is that a new phone?
At last (Score:2)
Dear Mr. A. Coward, At last you're giving up. Goodbye.
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bye slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
I think that really did it.
cheese with cheese (Score:3, Interesting)
Every year that goes by the Oscars become more of a farce.
Slumdog was the most cheesy and predictable film i have seen in years. The screenplay seemed like it was written by a 3 year old, the acting was horrendous, and you knew exactly how the film would end after about 8 minutes into it.
Not news for nerds. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not going to enter an extended rant. But I do wish this kind of story didn't make the front page on /.
Re:Not news for nerds. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Movie nerds are among the largest classes of nerds, dude.
Okay, fair point. But I just figured that /. was implicitly News for Technology Nerds; not other kinds of nerdiness.
Re:Not news for nerds. (Score:5, Insightful)
Movie nerds are among the largest classes of nerds, dude.
Okay, fair point. But I just figured that /. was implicitly News for Technology Nerds; not other kinds of nerdiness.
We had this same argument during the earthquake in China over the summer. If you don't want to see this on the front page, use the firehose to mod it down. If you're using the beta index, mod it down so you don't see it. It's News For Nerds. Stuff that Matters. To many, this does matter. Not all of us participate in online forums (specifically that work doesn't block during the day) and it's nice to discuss it.
Just because this article doesn't pertain to your interests doesn't mean you have to come in and troll it. There's also many kinds of Technologies that go behind making movies from the start to finish.
I don't have any interest in the Mars Lander, but I don't go in trolling ABOUT THOSE DAMN NASAHOLES and how JUNIOR CANT READ GIVE THEM MONEY. Get over yourself and scroll down, it's not that big of an inconvenience to ignore one article.
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Re:Not news for nerds. (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet it doesn't say Technology on the site header.
What would be appropriate content for the entertainment department in your opinion? I'm honestly asking here, as a movie/tech/gaming nerd I'm curious.
Re:Not news for nerds. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this new trend for everybody who has any kind of interest calling themselves "nerds" or "geeks"? I heard some beautiful person on TV the other day describing themselves as a "Musical Theatre Geek". WTF?
My current theory is that this is a nice way of bragging that "I know loads about this". By saying you're a "geek" it makes it sound like you're being humble about it.
Seriously though, I was proud of being a geek/nerd when it meant being a computery person who is passionate about science and technology and who therefore sometimes seems odd to people who are not into those things. However, if the word "nerd" has come to mean anybody with any kind of interest, it seems a bit of a lame and meaningless term.
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[T]he words "geek" and "nerd" exchanged status positions. A nerd was still socially tainted, but geekdom acquired its own cool counterculture. A geek possessed a certain passion for specialized knowledge, but also a high degree of cultural awareness and poise that a nerd lacked.
From The Alpha Geeks [nytimes.com], an op-ed piece by David Brooks. It's actually an interesting read -- worth checking out.
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Seriously though, I was proud of being a geek/nerd when it meant being a computery person who is passionate about science and technology and who therefore sometimes seems odd to people who are not into those things.
<nelson>ha ha</nelson>
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Geekdom has always had its camps: you've got your computer geeks, music theater geeks, comic book geeks, fantasy geeks, and so on. Basically if you were interested in something that wasn't considered cool (i.e., something other than cars, sports, cheerleading, binge drinking), you were a geek of one stripe or another.
Of course now, in some sort of wicked irony, it's cool to be a geek. Part of it is a reflection that so much of our lives have become so closely intertwined with technology and gadgets. For
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Movie nerds are among the largest classes of nerds, dude.
There are already tons of sites for those people. The difference between a movie nerd and a real nerd is that movie nerds have dedicated huge portions of their brains to meaningless, typically mindless entertainment. They have memorized the names, faces, shoe sizes, and favorite foods of people who could not give one tenth of one shit about them and if they met them on the street would probably tell them they smell funny.
Please, please keep the non-geek-interest entertainment schlock off of slashdot lest it
Re:Not news for nerds. (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, I actually enjoy news articles like this sometimes. It's a welcome surprise from all the Linux zealotry/Microsoft bashing this site is used to.
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I dunno, I actually enjoy news articles like this sometimes. It's a welcome surprise from all the Linux zealotry/Microsoft bashing this site is used to.
Bah....in the old days we would add Mac Fanboyism to the mix and call it a night. We were happier back then.
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You must not come here often, or you get your information from uncyclopedia. Posts saying anything negative about Microsoft are almost always modded flamebait, especially when true. Say something negative about Linux and you're more likely to get a comment reply educating you.
I had six stories posted to the front page last year, eight the year before that, and IIRC not one dealt with Linux or Microsoft. If you haven't submitted any stories, don't bitch about what's posted.
That said, I agree completely with
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Posts saying anything negative about Microsoft are almost always modded flamebait, especially when true. Say something negative about Linux and you're more likely to get a comment reply educating you.
This hasn't been my experience at all. What I have noticed is that if you say the same old boring shit against Microsoft, or if you say some shit against Microsoft that just isn't true (e.g. completely fucking ignorant psuedotechnical examinations of Windows that purport to discover flaws which aren't really flaws while ignoring the real issues) then you are likely to get modded down by a community tired of hearing people make shit up.
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I enjoy this sort of story every once in a while too. Here on Slashdot we're more than happy to talk all day about what technology is being used in making films or about Hollywood's often overzealous antipiracy efforts or any number of stories about the Watchmen movie, all of which just reinforce the fact that movies are part of our lives. So if Slashdot wants to toss in a story about the Oscars, which after all happens only once per year, I don't see it being all that big a deal. The way folks are react
If you're actually interested... (Score:2, Informative)
Robbed for the sound oscar? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Robbed for the sound oscar? (Score:5, Informative)
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And even a lot of dialog is either redone or touched up in post.
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You could argue it's much much harder to do sound when none exists whereas a crowded street provides them all for you.
Re:Robbed for the sound oscar? (Score:4, Informative)
Most live-action movies have overdubbed sound. Not all, but it is the norm. So the difference between a live-action film and an animated film, in terms of creating a soundtrack, is quite small. Both have massive sound effects -- in a live-action film, each footstep, each door opening, each paper crinkling, each jingle of keys, each car passing, and every single uttered syllable, is likely dubed. And even if you do have live sound (which, nominally, you do), there's lots of manipulation that needs to be done to turn it into a soundtrack. Just like with an animated film, except you lack the live sound recording.
Re:Robbed for the sound oscar? (Score:5, Informative)
and every single uttered syllable, is likely dubed.
That's where you lost it. Most sound effects are dubbed, yes, but there's an entire team of people on a film set dedicated to keeping the dialogue clean and usable. Dubbed dialogue can rarely match the intensity of a real, live recording of a scene and using it almost always robs a performance of some quality.
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I disagree. Barring anything stupid like bad sync, dubbed does not rob anything. The sound mixers can do wonders, and they do. If a producer or director wants it to sound crappy to match the feel of other footage, they can add that right back in.
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That's what I tried, and failed, to say up there. From a performing standpoint, dubbing is a very different and less authentic process than being on a set and interacting with other performers and colors the final result.
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I see now your point. The thing is that I think that good actors are good, and that is just acting. When I watch a particularly good movie, I watch it a few times. Then I wait for the DVD and I watch the commentaries. In almost every case during the commentary there was something to the effect of, I needed to rerecord this dialogue, I am happy with how well it turned-out. If I had never heard the commentary, I would have never even noticed. In fact there are some cases where words were changed, and the effe
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I agree that Burtt got robbed.
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you keep the take with the best visuals and fix the sound later.
I sense... a great disturbance. It's as if millions of mixers, boom ops, and sound editors screamed out in frustration and were suddenly silenced.
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I'll fix them later
What's an Oscar? (Score:5, Funny)
Oscar betrays its Western centerednes (Score:5, Interesting)
Would Slumdog have been even noticed had it not been made by a British Director? Thousands of movies have been made about poverty in India. They get as much attention as movies made about drugs in American cities. People deal with this shit in their everyday life and dont want to watch it when they pay to enter a theater for some relaxation. Only people who have never seen poverty get their rocks off by watching something like Slumdog. Then again probably why Rambo and Die Hard were so popular outside the States was that guns are a big deal in countries with gun control.
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It nearly went straight to DVD so possibly not. However, it's the first film I can remember in years where I would hear people talking in the office, on the train etc saying 'you must go and see Slumdog'. That just doesn't happen these days so the buzz was very much word of mouth initially.
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One possible reason why no one has said "you must go and see Slumdog" before is because never before has a movie been called slumdog.
All, jackassery on my part aside, nobody flipped you knew flipped out over Dark Knight?
Re:Oscar betrays its Western centerednes (Score:5, Insightful)
Your point is very valid. But in this case it's not the director. Danny Boyle wasn't a bankable name, or, indeed, a successful director. Or indeed, a good director. He's a hack who steals ideas from other movies. Slumdog would have been much better with a talented artist at the helm.
Note also that he had an Indian co-director who's had absolutely no credit whatsoever.
No. In this case it's the producer who got it its success-- multi-millionaire Paul Smith, realty TV hack, and expert publicist. Cashing in nicely on India.
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I strongly suggest watching Ram Gopal Verma's film "Satya" and/or Madhur Bhandarkar's "Chandni Bar"
instead of slumdog for a better exposure to the same subject.
Satya and CB portray the genuine trials and tribulations of Mumbai's different peoples without degrading or dehumanizing an entire country of people like Boyle did with slumdog.
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Thank you for those suggestions. Slumdog was a gangster movie with a love interest and a game show hook. It is by the numbers. If it had not been set in India everyone would have seen it for what it was. I was very disappointed to see it do so well. I saw it and Coraline on Saturday and Coraline was the much better movie, and Coraline had much potential that it did not take advantage of in the closing third. As I was watching Slumdog I could not stop thinking that this movie must be incredibly offensive to
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Slumdog was a gangster movie with a love interest and a game show hook. It is by the numbers.
Oh, absolutely. I can't tell you how sick I am of the unending stream of gangster romance movies set against game shows.
As I was watching Slumdog I could not stop thinking that this movie must be incredibly offensive to Indian people, and I don't know that much about India.
How very enlightened and noble of you. I'm sure that the world's 1.1 billion Indians will sleep better knowing that you've taken time out of your day to be offended on their behalf.
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without degrading or dehumanizing an entire country of people like Boyle did with slumdog.
Can you educate me as to how Boyle did this?
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So which is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Was Slumdog the co-creation of an Indian director who is not getting sufficient credit? Or is it a Western director degrading India for profit? Both criticisms cannot be simultaneously true.
The idea that Slumdog Millionaire "degrades" India is offensive. It implies that any movie that shows the negative aspects of a society is inherently degrading. Thoughts like that come from a perspective that we have to treat some countries like "special" children--keep them from all harm and make sure they wear their helmet and kneepads all the time. Give me a break. No one would be complaining if this exact same movie was set in the U.S., where there are plenty of slums and gangsters and game shows. That betrays a subtle racism of low expectations toward India. In comparison I do not recall similar outcry when Western filmmakers began to use Hong Kong cast, crew, and concepts to make movies.
India has slums and violence, as many, many Indian movies have portrayed. Note that much of the production and acting crew of SM come directly from the Indian film industry, and are happy about their work in the movie. Including the Indian co-director.
Cultural Marxist? (Score:2)
Vested interest in undermining the country?
Well buddy, you better back up those claims:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikas_Swarup [wikipedia.org]
Examples please. (Score:2)
Which ideas has he stolen?
From where?
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If I recall correctly (and I'm at work and can't verify), I thought the producers of the film and Boyle were so thankful to their casting director for rocking their socks off with such talent that they gave her a co-director credit. It was purely symbolic since that goes against "the rules" of the director's guild or whatever. Maybe that's the co-director you're thinking of?
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Can't find any real news? (Score:2)
http://www.jacklail.com/blog/archives/2009/02/marc-andreessen-the-game-is-co.html [jacklail.com]
Excellent discussion of technology, economy, kindle, newspapers and social networking.
Danny Boyle (Score:4, Interesting)
How about the Sci-Tech Awards? (Score:5, Interesting)
- Jasen.
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Sci-Tech Awards (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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Actually, 4 of the 5 films nominated for best picture went relatively unnoticed in the US, despite all being critical successes. Only 'Benjamin Button' received a widespread release, or could have been considered a "blockbuster" by any measure.
If nothing else, this makes this year's ceremony a bit more noteworthy than years past. Even the industry seems to acknowledge that the films that did well at the box office this past year were by and large awful, in spite of there being some legitimately good films
So culture is not stuff that matters? (Score:2, Flamebait)
The asinine amount of replies to this topic is completely mind boggling.
From all the fine arts, cinema is the most accessible and for the same reason the art that most matters, since all of us are exposed to it in a way that sculpture, classical music, literature, dance or architecture can only dream about.
This form of art awards prizes in different festivals and ceremonies, and undoubtedly the Oscar is the most important prize in the English speaking world, which in case you didn't know, dominates the movi
Good to see that screwing over children paid off (Score:2, Insightful)
Ahhh, the circle of life.
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Re:OK, how do I ignore the ENTERTAINMENT section? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh no! You were exposed to the same information from two different sources!
Call homeland security! This gross indecency must end!
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I added this to my /etc/hosts.deny file:
entertainment.slashdot.org
but I think I got a virus because when I restarted firefox, I heard Christian Bale "Oh, GOOD for you, and how was it? I hope it was fucking good because firefox is useless now isn't it? Fuck's sake man, you're amateur..."
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I added this to my /etc/hosts.deny file:
entertainment.slashdot.org
hosts.deny is for listing hosts (and services) to deny connections from. You're thinking of /etc/hosts.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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That blows. I was rooting for Apu in the Simpson's Movie.
Much more compelling performance....
Apu was robbed!!!
Re:OK, how do I ignore the ENTERTAINMENT section? (Score:5, Funny)
Apu was robbed!!!
That's nothing new, really. The Kwik-E-Mart gets robbed all the time.
Re:OK, how do I ignore the ENTERTAINMENT section? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of it has to do with the fact that the readership for Slashdot has gotten older along with the site, and some of it is that sites like Digg.com have sprung up to pull away a lot of the kiddies.
It's not all roses here, but I continue to use Slashdot because you actually can get some decent discussions going here, and there's a lot of actually funny responses too.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You say that now, but you'll change your mind when Twitter and Co get all deep and meaningful about The Hottie and The Nottie [imdb.com]
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I wouldn't want to see much entertainment news on Slashdot, but I think it is OK to post annual articles on the Academy Awards and Grammys to discuss films and music in a Slashdot way.
Discussing films and music in a slashdot way is discussing the technical and legal ramifications. Who won a bullshit popularity contest designed to keep the masses of asses interested in media which pisses on their minds is not repeat not worthy news for nerds. Anyone who thinks it is obviously needs to take a deep breath and step away from the fucking television.
Los Angeles is going to be underwater soon anyway (not soon enough for me, but whatever.) The WB will have a hard time broadcasting shit from the
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No, but I'm verklempt.
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So digital filmaking techniques and postproduction work (in computers) is not for nerds?
How the heck are nerds involved in making movies going to learn about the craft if they are cultural ignoramus?
Anybody involved in the movie industry should care about the Oscars, because the movies selected fro prizes show where the industry is nowadays.
And the word making the rounds is "digital". This is hughe news for all nerds, since new sources of work will be opening thatnks to this.
Bur of course we shouldn't care.
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